An Update From Dark0ne
I started this project back in 2001, in my bedroom, with a 56k modem, an excitement for the upcoming release of Morrowind and with no grand ambitions or intentions. I didn’t set out to build a business, I just wanted to make a place where modders could share their work without worrying it would vanish into the internet either the next time a fansite went offline or a publisher decided they were done with it. That idea grew legs, sprouted arms, and turned into Nexus Mods.
Since then, this site has been my entire adult life. Every single day, for over two decades, I’ve been "on call", whether it was fixing issues, reading feedback, pushing updates, or getting pulled into the latest bit of community drama. It’s been rewarding, sometimes chaotic, often exhausting and always personal. Somewhere along the way, I forgot to step back and breathe, or sleep properly. The dilemma of running a major social network that does not rest!
The strain of being responsible for the behemoth I created has taken its toll. The stress of the job has been a regular source of anxiety and stress-related health issues. I realised that I have been burning out and this started to have an impact on my staff and Nexus Mods as a whole. So, I firmly believe that the best thing for the future of Nexus Mods is for me to step aside and bring in new leadership to steer the business forward with renewed energy to make Nexus Mods the modding community we all truly deserve.
One of the biggest reasons I've been doing this for so long is that I've never felt that I truly found someone who really "gets" the modding community the way I do. Finding a new owner who would be able to understand and respect the myriad intricacies of both Nexus Mods as a business and the wider modding community was essential.
After months of meetings, face-to-face talks, and a whole lot of soul searching, I am thrilled to say that I truly believe I have found the exact right people for the task.
So yes, the ownership of Nexus Mods has changed hands, but I want to be clear, this isn’t some corporate “exit” or a backroom deal. This is me doing something I probably should’ve done years ago: taking care of myself. Reclaiming some headspace. And finally letting go of the idea that I have to do everything and be responsible for everything myself.
What changes now?
Honestly, not a lot, at least not from your side of things.
Behind the scenes, I’ve already been stepping back bit by bit. Over the past few years, the team has taken on more of the weight and the site’s been doing better than ever. What’s changing now is simply the formality of it, making sure the right people are in place to guide Nexus Mods into the next era.
That includes some structural updates to the company ownership that we aren’t shouting about, but I want to be transparent: they’re about long-term stability, not changing the values or direction of the platform. Nexus Mods is community-first and mod-author focused, that’s not up for negotiation.
While I am stepping back, it's important to understand that Nexus Mods isn't just about me and hasn't been for a long time. The Nexus Mods you see today has been created by a team of 40 incredibly dedicated people, some of whom have been here for over 9 years. They live and breathe modding, they care deeply, they’re experienced, committed, and they're very much still here. None of that is changing.
So if I can ask one thing, it’s to continue supporting them, the site, and the community they help nurture every day.
In terms of new faces, you’ll also be seeing more of Foledinho (Victor), Rapsak (Marinus) and Taagen (Nikolai), who’ve come on board to lead this next chapter. They’ve got deep roots in gaming, tech, and most importantly, they give a damn; about the site, the community, and the future we’re trying to build here.
Editor's Note: We've added Nikolai to the new owners listed above. He works more in the background, but is still an important part of the team!
They have my complete trust, and I’m incredibly proud to be bringing them onboard.
What about me?
I’m not disappearing. I’ll still be annoying people on the Mod Author Discord, lurking on the forums, and sticking my nose into community matters when I can’t help myself. I’ll also be working with the team to help guide the overall direction of the site, just without needing to be the person who signs off on every little thing and without taking responsibility for any and all things Nexus Mods.
Frankly, that’s a good thing, for me, for the team, and for the future of Nexus Mods.
702 comments
Thanks for the warm welcome! We’re as excited about Nexus Mods’ future as you are. This post was all about Robin, giving him the credit he truly deserves. He built something incredible, creating a culture that’s shaped gaming and modding as we know it. We're here to honor that legacy and carry it forward, but we need to earn your trust.
Now, let’s clear the air on a few things:
Trust takes time.
We're committed to putting control back in the hands of creators, players, and communities. We’ll get back to building now.
Marinus, Nikolai and Victor.
Having said that, I still think every one of the censorship posts should be removed from this comment section. Including mine.
I don't care if Dark0ne built a modding website with gorillions of downloads over two and a half decades, when it comes to subjects outside game modding he's still just a nerd with a computer. And as most other leftists, he clearly lacked the maturity to understand that no ideology is sacred and people have reasons to disagree with things he might see as unquestionable truths in his worldview. These traits make one unfit to lead, even if it's something as inconsequential as a video game modding website.
Although, disagree with him as I might, I do think he should still have a presence in the house he built, as he stated it'd be the case in this very post. But leave the decision making to more leveled, unbiased heads.
Indeed..
and isn't it funny how amongst those people it's ALWAYS "ideological," or "political" or "an agenda," when it doesn't align with THEIR particular interpretation of the status quo.
and isn't it funny how amongst those people it's ALWAYS "ideological," or "political" or "an agenda," when it doesn't align with THEIR particular interpretation of the status quo. "
Myopic takes is kind of their thing LOL
Once again, may I point you to The Paradox of Tollerence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
"Accepting other opinions or views,"
Yes, because you and your little playmates are just so very accepting of diversity. Why, you're practically oozing with it, everything you've said here just proclaims to the rooftops how much you embody love and tolerance. /s
Holy Hell !!!
Anyway, I'm done wasting my time with cretins and troglodytes.
Have a nice day.
@the mods and new site owners, please clean up this comment section, and as Zanderat says, mine included.
@AleniaVamp2000 No, you may not. Since it is in no way intolerant to reject a certain lifestyle for oneself.
It's also pointless trying to argue with the Dark0ne devouts here, they practically live in the comment section of NexusMods, Reddit, Twitter etc and will believe anything they're told as they were never one of those communities that were targeted by Dark0ne and his cohorts for simply existing.
could we ask the context and reason for a mod.
(Note that i have no idea about any of this you are talking about, i did not see any of these mods most of you are arguing about.)
If i was playing a game where the character is white and i can't play anyone else and its a roleplaying game, and I'm a black girl in real life, and i can mod, i might want to make a mod changing my character to be female and black. this in my view would be ok the reasons are not bigoted,
But than what if a moderator comes to ask me why i made the mod, and i simply don't respond or am in a bad mood or just don't have good social skills, and give a vague answer that does not make it clear the reasons to why and it's context, maybe if i was a moderator i would want to kick it down.
About the flag, i have no idea about this flag, did not see the mod, don't know what you are saying.
But if i have a flag any flag, in my game and it is reminding me of anything in real life i don't feel comfortable with for what ever reason or i just think it is ugly, in the way, or being spammed in the game too much.(this hypothetical would be for a non bigoted human being).
Than i might just want to mod it to change it somehow to what ever i would think would be more pleasant, and i might share it cos i would think people would have the same thought, than again, i would refer to the case i made about moderation above, to this part of the comment, and again,
if not enough reason and context was given and it was not clear enough that i was making it for a legitimate reason with no bigoted grounds, as a moderator i might take it down for looking like it is bigoted.
I have no idea how things work around here. i am a newb mostly using nexus for 20 years but for moding, i have no conversations and i don't read posts.
So to summarise, instead of things in this world being seen as right or wrong immediately, instead, mods being an overall art form, they are subjective to opinions and opinions and ideals are relative, but we do not like bigotry and hate etc, that's for sure, but do we also like freedom? than we must ask the art creators for the logic, the point, the reason, and understand the creator's truth of the why things are made.
And modders, would have to be responsible fully formed dudes, that can give coherent responses that satisfy the nexus staff and give a perfect insight in to why things are made.
As a side note: this is just my opinion, i don't really like how most people think its right or wrong, no, its a middle ground. it depends on why things are made, if they are not plain out hateful like right away, i think we should get it straight before we judge the mate making them.
I also think a lot of you have really good points, like someone said that if you let one hate mod come in than they all start coming in, maybe you are right.
But i still think what would really be fair would be to get the reasons for the mods and make conscious decisions before bans.
But def hide mods that seem offensive until they are proven non offensive.
Sorry i am boring everyone with more gigantic comments,
I wish the new owners the best of luck in taking over the world, of the nexus.
Thank you for letting people have discussions in here, although i find it strange, maybe we did need this lol.
If game developers only give players one choice and thereby try to foist a certain message on them, then in my opinion that is simply bad game design.
But i believe a bunch of dudes figuring out if the reason is legitimate and actually asking about it and getting a response,
Is the fair way to go and will probably work best.
I'm talking nexus staff, maybe selected for being optimal for this kind of decision making.
Maybe it is not perfect, but it might be close to perfect :P
Better that i think, than using a logic to ban or leave unbanned certain things depending on what it does without asking the modder about his true intentions and making a thought out decision before deciding the ban/removal.
Because it might be art after all, it might have taken a lot of care, love, hard work and time to make, and maybe it was in the nicest loveliest interest/intention.
That's a flawed argument. It's the argument used by the bigoted who complain about a black woman in their game, or a gay man, or whatever that isn't a straight white male. The existence of those people is not a message. Their inclusion in a game is not a message. Their existence as a playable character is not a message. The existence of anyone other than straight white men or women who strictly conform to more traditional gender roles is not a message.
But even if it were, even if developers put a message into their game, why is that bad? Games have been statements for several decades now. Other media even longer.
Pleased to meet you and thanks for clearing up some questions with your post.
Two distinct lines that caught my attention :
Are you saying you're giving the mod authors back the ownership to their mods, so they are free to delete them again ?
That they are free to make mods for the players and not get them banned because a few people are offended ?
Are you actively promoting the phrase : "if you don't like it, don't download it, don't post a hateful comment and move along" ?
Because that was always the golden rule, until "flags" became an issue.
Eagerly awaiting your response to this.
Cheers
-=DD=-
There also wasn’t any political censorship over the most mundane of changes.
Marinus, Nikolai and Victor, I hope you will continue the magic no worse.
Long live NexusMods!
This is quite far from the truth seeing as this site is doing very well, with many awesome mods being released for games that are more than a decade old, has a massive community that keeps growing, mods being released merely a few days after game release (even if it is said "we will not support mods") and employs more people than ever before (no layoffs like it has sadly been going on in game studios).
Do they makes mistakes and errors of judgement? Sure. But so have I and you as well.
I hope you will have great success in whatever comes next for you.
Best wishes
The basic business plan of these techbros is as follows: keep the service going while attempting to gussy up the numbers some more so that they can turn around and sell the thing to the next bidder and make some nice profit. That's it. That's all it is.
(And the ownership will keep changing until the service is run into the ground. If you believe something else, you haven't been around long enough.)
I'm the last person to judge someone in the loop of wanting a number to become a bigger number. The most boring superpower is being able to predict the future, right after pretending to be human with a hole for a
head.
Unironically, best of luck to you and your endeavors. I'll now go back into my corner, doing my part in making skyrim more
interesting / r-rated.
Stay civil and offer suggestions to help them make this site what you want it to be instead of ranting and panicking.
My point being, depending on how they financed this - if they raised credit then within about 3 years we'll see how it went. There's a powerpoint somewhere with the risk factor number one being managing community backlash and the second one being IP disputes.
If they had cash on hand then they can afford to clown around as long as they feel like playing the part of benevolent internet landlord.
Maybe the suddenness of this news makes it hard to accept the change. I certainly didn't expect it but I am curious to see what will or will not change.
Let's see what happens and then we can decide if it was for better or worse.
Each Nexus account creator EXPLICITLY agrees to Terms of Service conditions. Those conditions EXPLICITLY state what you can and cannot publish on this PRIVATE business' website.
What the Terms of Service DO NOT apply to:
- How YOU choose to think.
- How YOU choose to interpret the world.
- What content HOSTED OUTSIDE OF NEXUSMODS.COM YOU PRIVATELY choose to implement in YOUR games on YOUR own PRIVATE electronic device(s).
That is the end of it.
There is nothing further to litigate within the purview of the relationship between the site, site content, and site account owners. Stop deliberately obfuscating. Stop moving the goalposts because you get a definitive, unequivocal answer you do not agree with. Stop the whataboutisms. Stop the bad faith arguments, the logical fallacies.
In the context of this very basic, boilerplate relationship between you, the Nexus account creator, and Nexus, a PRIVATE business, when it comes to mods:
- What political stance you think the website leans towards is IRRELEVANT.
- What you think is right or wrong is IRRELEVANT.
- What you think is fair or unfair is IRRELEVANT.
You want to know why?
Start reading from the top.
I'm a little worried that the site may be getting used as a political weapon in some cases (though I'm not putting blame on any staff or particular users, just in general), just for clarity/info I'm bi and poly, I don't think there should be cases where mods are removed that do something that is perceived to be leaning to one side of politics but then a mod that does something similar doesn't get removed leaning towards the other side.
If a mods description is as neutral as possible there shouldn't be an issue, if there is some kind of hate speech (as in actual hate speech, such as criminalizing being gay for example, or cursing a certain race) then the mod should be removed.
This kind of logic needs to be applied to all sides here. If we need some kind of a "Potentially Political" tag or something for people to block then so be it, but bias towards one side is not great, and it may even cause more problems than it solves outside of the nexus circle, but I'm seeing it effects things on nexus itself too which is not good.
There are obviously 2 polar opposite extreme sides in every case you can think of, and both extremes are prone to acting a bit hypocritical. For an on the nose blatant example, we have people that hate the trans community which try to find ways to destroy it (for example making them all look evil) and then we have people now that hate straight white males (making them all seem like bad or hateful people), now personally I don't think either extreme side is in the right, but don't lean towards a potential perceived side if you are going to be censoring, especially if a description is as neutral and written to be as politically absent as it can be.
If no unfair censoring is occurring as I described then keep doing what you are doing! Otherwise please at least hear my words.
Some examples of things that could be taken as political (in no particular level of importance) but shouldn't be outright banned unless its both sides:
- Replace flags with another flag (pride to us <-> us to pride)
- Replace gender or sex with another gender or sex (botw link to linkle <-> skyrim masculinized level lists)
- Replace skin color with another skin color
- Remove clothes or conceal with clothes (as in make them naked, obviously <-> cover up nudity or faces)
- Remove all corporate branding or add corporate branding to everything (like the andromeda mod to remove spacex <-> plaster spacex everywhere)
- I don't feel like typing anymore, the end
Edit: okay ending side note, just to be clear im not saying everyone is extremes, those are just examples to a few sides that i think try to ruin communities. everyone should be able to get along without seeming like they cant grow up, everyone has different opinions, please remember that, it's the extremes and the unreasonable that make things worse for everyone.
To the people having a hard time fathoming this, you are not fighting ze gays, or this website, you are fighting 80-90 years of anti-bigotry law making, some of it on EU level.
This site will never go back to the dark ages.
The focus of anti-discrimination protections in Denmark is primarily based on real-world interactions and societal equality, rather than third party websites I believe, public sector sites are however enforced, I could be wrong though. But regardless I agree there shouldn't be any discrimination happening, and if a mod is obviously meant to be inflammatory it shouldn't be on the site.
So we will eventually find out if it is enough to start a shitstorm.
A few "good" raiders now have that symbol.
I will let it slide for now since it is a very old and big project with a lot of legacy files, and the original authors are not there anymore. But I will eventually get back to it.
as an asian living in asia it baffles me that there are so much double standards in this website.